Mark Twain's America
Contributors: Louis J. Budd (Introduction)
Publisher: Bison Books; University of Nebraska Press
Published: April 1, 1997
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 351
ISBN-13: 9780803266070
Subjects: Literary studies: general; Novels, other prose & writers: 19th century; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Biography; Twain, Mark 1835-1910; Twain, Mark,; American English; Literary Criticism; USA; Civilization; American - General; Literary Criticism & Collections / American; Twain, Mark; 19th century; United States; General; 1835-1910; America; Authors, American; Knowledge
Description: Beginning in 1835, the birth year of Samuel Clemens, and extending through the Gilded Age, Mark Twain's America depicts the vigorous social and historical forces that produced the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Bernard DeVoto catches a people moving west: Twain's own family drifting down the Ohio, emigrants of every stripe, the famous and the obscure.

Answering genteel critics such as Van Wyck Brooks, who blamed the American frontier for stifling Twain's genius, DeVoto shows that, in fact, Twain's early days in Nevada and California made a writer of him. Mark Twain's America, first published in 1932, enriched by humor and supernatural slave lore, is an enduring work of American literary and cultural criticism.